Developing a Questionnaire to Assess Noise Exposure in Children and Teens

Until recently, children and teenagers were not thought to be an at-risk population for noise induced hearing loss (NIHL). As MP3 players have grown in popularity, there has been an increased awareness of possible noise exposure and hearing loss in children and teens. NIHL is a cumulative hearing loss that is due to repeated exposure to noise. Concerns about NIHL in children and teens are raised due to the opportunities for noise exposure that they may encounter in their daily environments. Children and teens can be exposed to potentially dangerous levels of noise during activities at school, part-time work, recreational activities, and even household chores (e.g. musical instruments, lawn mowers, dirt bikes, and vacuums). The need to identify, diagnose, and treat hearing loss, as close to the onset is crucial, especially for children. Hearing loss in children and teens impacts their speech perception, learning, self-image, and social skills. NIHL is virtually 100 percent preventable; therefore identifying any risk of NIHL as early as possible can stop its progression and severity. The present study attempts to develop a questionnaire to help identify children and teens at highest risk for NIHL. Mandated hearing screenings in schools provide an opportunity to reach those at risk. A noise exposure questionnaire may be a useful companion tool for the hearing screenings. Research about questionnaire development was completed to determine what survey format would be most effective. Items on the questionnaire were selected based on research regarding current concerns of NIHL and sources of noise exposure in children and teens. Five experts in the field of hearing conservation reviewed the questionnaire to address face validity. Comments provided by the experts were taken into consideration and the questionnaire was revised. In the future, a field trial of the questionnaire should be completed in order to correlate the results of the questionnaire to behavioral audiometric test results

El Duende: Folktale, oral history, and the construction of gendered and racialized discourses in Quito

El Duende is a popular mythical character featured in written and oral traditions in Latin America and Spain, where it is often described as particularly dangerous for women. In this research project, I focus on this character to explore the cultural and social meanings of these narratives in the Ecuadorian context, specifically in the city of Quito. Applying oral history methodology, I collected nine participants’ narratives about El Duende and conducted a discourse analysis of these stories. In this thesis, I discuss ways in which the stories about El Duende reproduce narratives of traditional gender role expectations and violence against women, and how the stories about the myth construct particular understandings of gender and racial relations that relate to colonial legacies that endure in current society. The main goal of this research is to understand the reproduction of discourses that shape everyday life and the power of folktales and language to construct gendered and racialized realities

The optimisation of conditions for the extraction of banana juice with a pectolytic enzyme preparation

The aim of the work was the optimisation of conditions for the extraction of juice from surplus bananas using pectolytic enzymes. Juice extracted in this way could be 'used to make other products, e.g. beverages, wine, vinegar. Bananas were supplied by Geest Industries Ltd., and were of known history and variety (Cavendish). The sample~ w'ere allowed to ripen under controlled conditions of temperature and relative humidity, and were enzyme-treated at the same degree of ripeness as determined by sugar content (18.0 + 0.3% w/w)....

S-Expansion with Ideal Subtraction and Solutions in Extended Supergravities

This thesis is about a new methd to perform the S-expansion procedure and studies in extended supergravites. In the present work, the concept of zero-reduction has been extended reproducing a generalized Inönü-Wigner contraction. This involves an innite abelian semigroup and the removal of an ideal subalgebra. We refer about the use of theorem VII.2 of the reference [20] which serves to construct the topological invariant of a respective S-expanded algebra from another of which the bilinear form is known, therefore is an extension and generalization of the mentioned theorem. This procedure allows to develop the dynamics and construct the Lagrangians of several theories. This work reproduces the results already presented in the literature, concerning the generalized Inönü-Wigner contraction, and also gives some new features. Moreover, it gives a connection between the contraction processes and the expansion methods introduced in [17], which was an open question already mentioned in [12]. Also is shows one of the interesting applications, which is to obtain a particular hidden Maxwell superalgebra underlying supergravity in four dimensions. Thus we have written the hidden Maxwell superalgebra in the Maurer-Cartan formalism, and then, we have considered the parametrization of the 3-form A(3) in terms of 1-forms, in order to show the way in which the trivial boundary contribution in four dimensions, dA(3), can be naturally extended by considering particular contributions to the structure of the extra fermionic generator, appearing in the hidden Maxwell superalgebra. These extensions contain terms which involve the cosmological constant. Interestingly, the presence of these terms depends strictly on the form of the extra fermionic generators appearing in this hidden extension of D = 4 supergravity. Besides, we have reviewed some concepts of the S-expansion. We show especially, how S-expansion procedure aects the geometry of a Lie group: was found how the magnitude of a vector change and the angle between two vectors. About the kind of algebra, after apply an S-expansion, it is a non-simple Lie algebra. Then, considering resonance and reduction, we built an analytic method able to give us the multiplication table(s) of the set(s) involved in an Sexpansion process for reaching a target Lie (super)algebra from a starting one, after having chosen properly the partitions over subspaces of the considered (super)algebras. Furthermore, we study in the context of ungauged supergravities, the symmetry under the kinetic part in the action and the realization to a global symmetry group G. Moreover, we show the use of the solution generating technique. As a rst step in the unnished research we work with the AdS metric with the global group G2(2),which it is the global symmetry group of the 3D description of N = 2 supergravity coupled to a vector multiplet [13], where we found the charges. Considering that a solution with cosmological constant is always gauged in extended supergravities [36], it is planned to investigate the applicability of the solution generating technique on gauged theories asymptotically at, i.e AdS metric

DISEÑO E IMPLEMENTACIÓN DE UN SISTEMA DE ADQUISICIÓN DE DATOS EN TIEMPO REAL PARA LA CAPTURA, SIMULACIÓN Y TRANSFORMACIÓN DE TRAMAS DE DATOS DE SENSORES CINEMÁTICOS EN TRAMA TCP/IP PARA LAS CORBETAS MISILERAS CLASE ESMERALDAS DE LA ARMADA DEL ECUADOR

El presente documento tiene por objetivo, presentar una propuesta para desarrollar un sistema basado en LABVIEW que permita adquirir datos en tiempo real proporcionados por la ESTACIÓN CLIMÁTICA, la CORREDERA, el GPS y la ECOSONDA los cuales son sensores cinemáticos de diferentes marcas; cuya información entregada está basada en el protocolo NMEA0183 y transmitida mediante estándar RS422/485. Estos datos serán analizados y mediante los VI realizados serán encapsulados y convertidos al protocolo TCP/IP para transmitirlos a través de una red Ethernet de alta velocidad al Sistema de Mando y Control en los Corbetas Misileras clase Esmeraldas, esta aplicación será realizada utilizando hardware y software industrial debido a que este prototipo tiene como finalidad ser implementado en las embarcaciones que posee La Armada Nacional, por lo que se debe garantizar su resistencia y durabilidad.This document aims to present a proposal to develop a LabVIEW-based system that allows real-time data acquisition provided by WEATHER STATION, the CORREDERA, GPS and ECHO SOUNDER which are kinematic sensors of different brands; whose information given is based on the NMEA 0183 protocol and transmitted via standard RS 422 / 485. These data will be analyzed by the VI and will be encapsulated and converted to TCP / IP protocol for transmission over an Ethernet high speed network System Command and Control in misileras Corvettes Esmeraldas class; this application will be made using industrial hardware and software because this prototype is intended to be implemented on ships owned by the National Navy, so you must ensure strength and durability

Three-dimensional Maxwellian Carroll gravity theory and the cosmological constant

In this work, we present the three-dimensional Maxwell Carroll gravity by considering the ultra-relativistic limit of the Maxwell Chern-Simons gravity theory defined in three spacetime dimensions. We show that an extension of the Maxwellian Carroll symmetry is necessary in order for the invariant tensor of the ultra-relativistic Maxwellian algebra to be non-degenerate. Consequently, we discuss the origin of the aforementioned algebra and theory as a flat limit. We show that the theoretical setup with cosmological constant yielding the extended Maxwellian Carroll Chern-Simons gravity in the vanishing cosmological constant limit is based on a new enlarged extended version of the Carroll symmetry. Indeed, the latter exhibits a non-degenerate invariant tensor allowing the proper construction of a Chern-Simons gravity theory which reproduces the extended Maxwellian Carroll gravity in the flat limit